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      ‘Confederates were traitors’: Ty Seidule on West Point, race and American history

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      Interview‘Confederates were traitors’: Ty Seidule on West Point, race and American historyMartin Pengelly in New York The discovery of a plaque showing a member of the Ku Klux Klan at the US military academy made headlines. One member of the commission which recommended its removal is a historian of the US army and the lost cause mythIn a 36-year army career, Ty Seidule served in the US, Germany, Italy, Kenya, Kosovo, Macedonia, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. He retired a brigadier general.Lincoln and the fight for peace: John Avlon on a president in the shadow of new warRead moreAn emeritus West Point history professor, he now teaches at Hamilton College. His online video, Was the Civil War About Slavery?, has been viewed millions of times, and in 2021 he published a well-received book, Robert E Lee and Me: A Southerner’s Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause.Outside academia, Seidule is a member of the Naming Commission, a body set up in the aftermath of the police murder of George Floyd and the protests for racial justice it inspired, tasked with recommending changes to military memorials to Confederates who fought in the civil war.Asked how the US military came to name bases, barracks, roads and other assets after soldiers who fought to secede from the union and keep Black people enslaved, Seidule said: “The first thing to know is that in the 19th century, most army officers saw the Confederates as traitors.“That’s not a presentist argument. That’s what they thought. And particularly about Lee, who renounced his oath, fought against this country, killed US army soldiers and as [Union general and 18th president Ulysses S] Grant said, did so for the worst possible reason: to create a slave republic.“So in the 19th century, they would not have done this … the first memorialisation of a Confederate at West Point is in the 1930s. So, why is that? [It’s about] segregation in America. The last West Point black graduate was 1889. The next one was in 1936. West Point reflects America. [The first memorials] were a reaction to integration.”Seidule rejects the notion that memorials to Lee and other Confederates – PGT Beauregard, a West Point superintendent fired for sedition, William Hardee, a commandant who fought in the west – might be claimed as symbols of reconciliation.“The problem with that is it was reconciliation among white people, at the expense of Black people.“There had already been reconciliation. Magnanimously, the United States of America pardoned all former Confederates in 1868 … reconciliation is sort of an agreement among whites that Black people will be treated in a Jim Crow fashion. So no, it’s not a reconciliation based, I would say, on an America we want today.”Last week, the Naming Commission made headlines when it highlighted a bronze at the United States Military Academy which depicts a member of the Ku Klux Klan.Seidule told the New York Times that though the Klan bronze fell outside the remit of the commission – the racist terror group was founded after the defeat of the south – the panel chose to highlight it “because we thought it was wrong”.The commission has issued reports concerning military bases and the military and naval academies. It will present its final report in October. Speaking to the Guardian, Seidule cited such ongoing work as reason not to discuss the Klan plaque further. But West Point did so on its Facebook page.It said: “There is a triptych (three bronze panels) at one of the entrances of Bartlett Hall [the science centre] that depicts the history of the United States. The artwork was dedicated on 3 June 1965 … As part of the middle panel titled ‘One Nation, Under God, Indivisible’, there is a small section that shows a Ku Klux Klan member.“The artist, Laura Gardin Fraser … wanted to create art that depicted ‘historical incidents or persons’ that [documented] both tragedy and triumph in our nation’s history.”Noting that the work was dedicated to graduates who served in the second world war and the Korean war, West Point added: “The academy strives to graduate diverse leaders of character for our nation.”Lee did not lead the Confederacy. Its president was Jefferson Davis, a former secretary of war and senator from Mississippi. But Lee, who died in 1870, became the most-memorialised Confederate.Asked why, Seidule said: “If you think of Confederate monuments, of the burning of books which the United Daughters of the Confederacy did in the early part of the 20th century, to ensure that textbooks said the right thing, really it’s that every religion needs its God. And in a way, that’s what Lee became.”Today, conservatives are banning books in attempts to control teaching of history, race, sexuality and other culture-war issues.Seidule concentrates on his historical work. Lee, he said, was in part idealised for lack of other options. James Longstreet enjoyed battlefield victories but after the war “fought for biracial democracy in New Orleans. So you can’t use him.“While Lee ended up losing hugely, completely defeated, his armies destroyed, he was successful for a time before that. And so he was seen by the white south as their best general, as their ideal. And by the 1930s, he comes to represent something not just in the south, but among white Americans in general.”Beyond West Point, the Confederate battle flag has become a symbol of rebellion, reaction and racism more potent than any statue or building. On 6 January 2021 it even flew in the halls of Congress, when Trump supporters attacked.Again, Seidule rejects any notion that use of the flag might in any way be excused.“We have to remember that it really didn’t mean that much different then than it does now. In 1863 it represented the Army of Northern Virginia, which was fighting to create a slave republic. Now, some people say it reflects rebellion. But remember, this was rebellion to create a slave republic. And so, to me, it is a symbol of all that America is not.“It’s a symbol of insurrection, it’s a symbol of somebody that would not take the results of a democratic election. I grew up with it, my dad had Confederate flags over the mantle. I know how powerful these symbols are.“One thing we often do with the civil war as historians is we let the smell of gunpowder seduce us into thinking about the war as American football, [about the] Xs and Os of military history, without understanding the purpose. That’s the thing I always come back to: why this cruel war?”He today that sheds his blood with me: when West Point rugby went to warRead moreSeidule’s next book will be about events at West Point towards the end of another cruel war: Vietnam. In 1971, Richard Nixon decided he wanted to oversee “a moral rebirth” of an army in disarray.“OK,” Seidule says, “that’s great. But the next thing he does is go to Trophy Point”, the focal point of the West Point campus, high over the Hudson river. “If you’ve seen Battle Monument, you know it says on there, ‘the War of the Rebellion’. Nixon says, ‘Where’s the Confederate monument?’ So he orders the superintendent to put a Confederate monument on Trophy Point.“And the Black cadets find out. And they nearly mutiny and they write a manifesto based on the Attica uprising” – at a New York prison in 1971 – “and [eventually] just so many things change.“They put on a concert to raise money for sickle cell anemia research, featuring Stevie Wonder and the Supremes, up at Michie Stadium”, the home of Army football. “They bring Louis Farrakhan to talk. They institute remarkable change, which I’m arguing comes from one of the most successful protest movements in American military history that nobody knows about, and eventually it kills the Confederate monument.“So that’s the book I’m writing now.”
      Robert E Lee and Me: A Southerner’s Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause is published in the US by St Martin’s Press
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      Trump is reading my memoir, Kushner claims of famously book-shy boss

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      Trump is reading my memoir, Kushner claims of famously book-shy bossSon-in-law and former adviser says ex-president has ‘given me some compliments on’ critically panned 500-page tome Donald Trump was notoriously averse to reading his briefing papers as president but according to Jared Kushner he has started reading Breaking History, his son-in-law and former adviser’s 500-page White House memoir.Breaking History review: Jared Kushner’s dispiriting Trump bookRead moreSpeaking to the Fox News host Brian Kilmeade on Wednesday, Kushner said: “When I gave it to him, he said, ‘Look, this is a very important book. I’m glad somebody wrote a book that’s really going to talk about what actually happened in the room.’ And he says, ‘I’m going to read it.’“So he started reading and he’s given me some compliments on it so far. And again, I hope he’s proud of it. I don’t know if he’ll like anything [in it].”Critics have not liked much in Kushner’s book. For the Guardian, Lloyd Green called it “a mixture of news and cringe” which “selectively parcels out dirt”. In the New York Times, Dwight Garner called the book “earnest and soulless”, saying “Kushner looks like a mannequin, and he writes like one”.“Kushner’s fealty to Trump remains absolute. Reading this book reminded me of watching a cat lick a dog’s eye-goo,” Garner wrote.Kushner has said he “read that review and … thought it was hysterical” and wanted “to hang it on my wall”. He also said sales had increased since the Times piece. The book does not appear on the Times bestseller list.Married to Trump’s oldest daughter, Ivanka, Kushner was a senior adviser through a presidency that ended in a deadly attack on Congress as Trump attempted to stay in power.Kushner said: “Sometimes he listened. Sometimes he didn’t but we had a lot of fun.”Whether Trump will finish Kushner’s book remains to be seen. The former president has never been known to be much of a reader – although his first wife, Ivana Trump, did say he kept a volume of Hitler’s speeches by his bed.At the time, Trump told Vanity Fair: “If I had these speeches, and I am not saying that I do, I would never read them.”TopicsBooksJared KushnerDonald TrumpUS politicsRepublicansTrump administrationPolitics booksnewsReuse this content More

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      If We Break review: Hunter Biden as horror husband and political problem

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      If We Break review: Hunter Biden as horror husband and political problemKathleen Buhle’s memoir in answer to a similar confessional from the president’s son makes uncomfortable reading Hunter Biden was a nasty husband. On top of his penchant for addiction and excess, verbal abuse littered his marriage to Kathleen Buhle. In her memoir, If We Break, Buhle recounts how the 46th president’s surviving son regularly taunted her for supposed intellectual shortcomings.Fox News’ Sean Hannity pitched Trump on Hunter Biden pardon – reportRead moreAmid booze-soaked benders and drug-fueled rages, Biden called his wife “goddam dumb”, the “dumbest person” he had met. “Get away from me, you idiot,” he purportedly thundered.Buhle discovered text messages that showed she wasn’t alone in suffering such tirades.“He was mean at times, and strangely tender, with dozens of women,” Buhle writes. “I was struck by the number of them who clearly thought they could save him.”Buhle attended a Catholic high school then graduated from St Mary’s University in San Antonio with a degree in psychology. Biden pocketed degrees from Georgetown University and Harvard Law School, but declined to look too deeply into the mirror. Socio-economic disadvantage is not to blame for his penchant for crack, prostitutes and self-pity. Buhle writes that she once told him: “Hunt … a kid from a middle-class family does not have a ballroom.” He also had a “tuxedo hanging in his closet – a tuxedo he used fairly regularly”.The conservative muckraker Peter Schweizer has shredded the Bidens for their business dealings. Yearning for catharsis as much as for score-settling, Buhle says she knows nothing of her former husband’s financial escapades.“I liked the nice things,” she admits. “I didn’t want to think about the cost at which they were coming.Otherwise, she has plenty to share. Subtitled “A Memoir of Marriage, Addiction and Healing”, her book is a dagger.The couple met in 1992, as members of the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. They married the next year and had three daughters. For Hunter, alcoholism and tax problems surfaced in the early 2000s. Later, the US navy expelled him for using cocaine. In 2017, he and Buhle divorced.If We Break is easy reading, published in time for Father’s Day. It leaves you wondering how and why Joe Biden pursued the presidency in 2020 when all this family drama was percolating away. Hunter’s laptop, a computer he once owned that Republicans claim is full of incriminating material, debuted before election day. It is still producing stories. If We Break may shock but it does not surprise.Buhle demonstrates better judgment than her ex-husband, who published his own memoir last year. She knew when to walk away. He had difficulty letting go. More important, she understood that not that all broken things can be repaired.Buhle possesses an awareness of self and circumstances her ex-husband evidently lacks. For example, in 2015, just minutes after Beau Biden, his brother, was buried, Hunter contemplated running for elected office as Beau once did, becoming attorney general of Delaware. Buhle’s reaction was short and to the point.“What are you talking about? You’ve only been sober a few days … This is insane. Please don’t mention anything to the girls.”Hunter did blab – in Beautiful Things, his self-reverential confessional.“I underestimated how much the wreckage of my past and all that I put my family through still weighed on Kathleen,” he wrote.Think self-absolution and exhibitionism, rather than contrition, in an episode that preceded a fling with his late brother’s wife.“He said it was his duty to take care of Hallie and her kids,” Buhle writes. When she learned of their affair, all she could muster was: “Oh my God.” She says she didn’t cry. At that moment, she writes, she “knew in some way that he couldn’t hurt [her] any more”.For what it’s worth, the Old Testament obligates the brother of a childless man to marry the widow. But Beau had two kids and anyway, religious duty was most likely not on Hunter’s mind. In 2018, according to emails harvested from that laptop, Hunter insisted Hallie test for HIV.Joe Biden makes only rare appearances in If We Break. Buhle depicts him as a loving father and kind father-in-law. He greeted her when they first met by putting “his hands on [her] cheeks and look[ing] me in the eyes, his nose almost touching my own”. Then a senator, Biden told her: “Honey, my boy tells me he loves you, so that means I love you too. Understand? I love you.”Rough Draft review: Katy Tur’s fascinating – and flawed – story of news and familyRead moreAt the time, she was pregnant. Buhle also writes that Biden introduced her “as his daughter everywhere we went” and that the family saw the future president as “the sun around which we all revolved”.A lot revolves around Hunter. A federal criminal investigation proceeds. Taxes are only part of his worries.For his father, in terms of political pressures, inflation is on the rampage, approval numbers circle the drain. Democratic cognoscenti harbor serious doubts about the president’s capacity to govern. David Axelrod, Barack Obama’s senior strategist, casts Biden’s age as a major liability. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez declines to say if she will back a reelection bid.Yet Biden was the only Democrat capable of unseating Trump. The bench is neither wide nor deep.Count Katherine Buhle’s memoir as another addition to the canon of opposition research on the Bidens, should Joe Biden run for re-election. Buhle shouldn’t expect a thank you note from Kevin McCarthy or Mitch McConnell, but she has earned one.
      If We Break: A Memoir of Marriage Addiction and Healing is published in the US by Crown Publishing
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      Here’s the Deal review: Kellyanne Conway on Trump – with plenty of alternative facts

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      Here’s the Deal review: Kellyanne Conway on Trump – with plenty of alternative facts The former White House counselor’s memoir is tart, readable and thoroughly selective when it comes to inconvenient truthsKellyanne Conway joined Donald Trump’s orbit after Ted Cruz’s presidential bid collapsed and Paul Manafort wore out his welcome. The Trump White House was a snake pit. Like most Trump memoirs, Conway’s book revels in selective recall as well as settling scores. After all, this is the woman who coined the term “alternative facts”.A Sacred Oath review: Mark Esper on Trump, missiles for Mexico and more Read moreConway strafes Steve Bannon, Jared Kushner and Mark Meadows, Trump’s last chief of staff. Her disdain is unvarnished, her language tart. Her book? Readable.Conway labels Bannon a “leaking dirigible” and an “unpaternal, paternalistic bore of a boor”. She dings his aesthetics and questions his stability. Confronted with the possibility Bannon might receive a presidential pardon, Conway says, she told him Trump didn’t owe him anything.“You were a leaker,” she remembers saying. “You were terrible to [Trump] in the press … You were the only source for at least two books riddled with lies.”He got the pardon anyway.Some who feel Conway’s sting are very close to home. She sticks a knife in her own husband, George, for trashing Trump and embarrassing her. Between the two men, Conway posits that Trump was the one who remained loyal. She may wish to reconsider. Her book has kindled Trump’s wrath.“I may have been the first person Donald Trump trusted in his inner circle who told him that he had come up short this time,” Conway writes, about the 2020 defeat Trump has refused to admit. But Trump denies she said any such thing.“If she had I wouldn’t have dealt with her any longer – she would have been wrong – could go back to her crazy husband,” he “truthed” on Thursday on his own ersatz Twitter, Truth Social.But Trump can’t say he wasn’t warned. The Devil’s Bargain, Joshua Green’s 2016 campaign exposé, captures Conway both badmouthing Trump’s chances and playing the sycophant.In 2019, Cliff Sims, once a junior White House staffer, framed things this way in his memoir, Team of Vipers: “Kellyanne stood in a class of own in terms of her machinations – I had to admire her sheer gall.”In Here’s the Deal, Kellyanne soft-pedals Green but is far less charitable to Sims. She rehashes his departure from the White House, dismisses him as a lightweight and gloats over Trump targeting him with a “brutal” takedown on Twitter.Left unsaid is that Sims played a significant role at the 2020 Republican convention, drafting speeches for two Trump children. And whatever his sins, he came to be re-embraced by senior Trump staff even after he challenged a Trump-induced non-disclosure agreement in court.On a matter of greater importance, Conway lauds Bob Mercer and his daughter Rebekah, the conservative mega-donors who invested in Cambridge Analytica, the now-defunct psychographic profiling company which was linked to Bannon.Rebekah Mercer allegedly provided connective tissue for the January 6 insurrection, via Parler. Conway omits such details. Not surprisingly, she also ignores Bob Mercer’s tax woes. In 2021, with his business partners, Mercer reportedly entered into a $7bn settlement with the IRS.Like many in Trumpworld, Conway hits Facebook for its role in the 2020 election. But she omits the nexus between Mark Zuckerberg’s social media giant and Cambridge Analytica, in 2016 and beyond. The two businesses shared more than a passing acquaintance.Cambridge Analytica illegally harvested personal data from Facebook. Conway takes Bannon to task for profiting from his investment in Cambridge Analytica but stays mum about the Mercers’ ownership.In 2016, the Cruz campaign spent more than $5.8m on Cambridge Analytica services. That same year, the unseen hand of the company put it sticky fingers on the scales of Brexit. This past week, the attorney general for the District of Columbia launched a lawsuit against Facebook in connection with the Cambridge Analytica data breach.Here’s the Deal also contains its fair share of semi-veiled ethnic reductionism. Conway writes of how she “made her bones” – a term with mafia origins – in Trump’s 2016 campaign. Elsewhere, she deploys “clever”, “shrewd” and “calculating” to describe Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law who is Jewish. At the same time, she shares a desire to keep things “classy”.Some realities cut too close to the bone. Despite acknowledging Trump’s loss in 2020, Conway is silent on his infamous post-election call with Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, in which he sought to overturn Joe Biden’s victory.“The people of Georgia are angry, the people in the country are angry,” Trump said. “And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, that you’ve recalculated.”The only thing missing was the president telling Raffensperger he was receiving an offer he couldn’t refuse. Unsurprisingly, Conway has few kind words for Biden. She recounts the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan and rightly tags his administration for inflation. But she also blames the president for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and for Iran threatening nuclear breakout.This Will Not Pass review: Trump-Biden blockbuster is dire reading for DemocratsRead moreHello, alternative facts. In February, Trump praised Vladimir Putin as smart and denigrated Nato. These days, Putin is under siege and Nato is the club to join. This somehow escapes Conway’s attention.As for Tehran, Axios reports that senior Israeli military officials now view Trump’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal as having “brought Iran closer to a nuclear weapon and created a worse situation”. An attempt to placate Trump’s base had a cost.Conway remains in the arena. Here’s the Deal doubles as an audition for a campaign slot in 2024. In Trumpworld, few are ever permanently banished. Conway should ask Steve Bannon. He could tell her some things.
      Here’s the Deal is published in the US by Simon & Schuster
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      Trump promises to depress readers with big lie book: ‘I don’t think you’ll enjoy it’

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      Trump promises to depress readers with big lie book: ‘I don’t think you’ll enjoy it’Former president trumpets work in progress on his false claims about electoral fraud in 2020 Donald Trump says he is writing a book – which will “depress” readers – about his lie that electoral fraud caused his defeat by Joe Biden in 2020.Former Trump official Kash Patel writes children’s book repeating false claim over Steele dossierRead moreSpeaking in Austin, Texas, on Saturday, Trump said: “This is the greatest hoax, heist. This is one of the greatest crimes in the history of our country. And sadly, the prosecutors don’t want to do anything about it.“This is the crime of the century. I’m actually writing a book about it called The Crime of the Century.“I don’t think you’ll enjoy it. You’ll be very depressed when you read it, but we want to have it down for historic reasons.”On Monday, Winning Team Publishing – an imprint co-founded by Donald Trump Jr which has put out a picture book about Trump’s presidency – announced the new book on Twitter.“NEW BOOK ALERT: CRIME OF THE CENTURY by President Donald J Trump!” the tweet shouted, promising details soon.The tweet linked to a website where copies of the picture book, Our Journey Together, were on sale for $74.99 (unsigned) and $229.99 (signed). A copy signed by Donald Trump Jr was priced at $199.99.Most presidents sign book deals. Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, has published one volume of memoirs after netting more than $60m for his work and that of his wife, Michelle.Trump has published a number of books under his own name, using ghostwriters. But he left office in disgrace, having been impeached twice, the second time for inciting the deadly Capitol attack of 6 January 2021. There has been no memoirs deal.In June last year, Trump claimed to have “turned down two book deals, from the most unlikely of publishers” because he did “not want a deal right now”. But he added: “I’m writing like crazy anyway, however, and when the time comes, you’ll see the book of all books.”At the same time, citing staff protests at Simon & Schuster over a deal for Mike Pence, Trump’s vice-president, publishing insiders said no mainstream house would touch a Trump memoir.“It would be too hard to get a book that was factually accurate,” Politico quoted one insider as saying. “That would be the problem. If he can’t even admit that he lost the election, then how do you publish that?”‘Emperor has no clothes’: man who helped make Trump myth says facade has fallenRead moreBooks about Trump, his time in power and his refusal to admit defeat continue to be bestsellers. But Keith Urbahn, an agent behind many such books, told Politico: “It doesn’t matter what the upside on a Trump book deal is – the headaches the project would bring would far outweigh the potential in the eyes of a major publisher.“Any editor bold enough to acquire the Trump memoir is looking at a factchecking nightmare, an exodus of other authors and a staff uprising.”Winning Team Publishing has no such problems. It did face controversy, however, when the New York Times reported that Trump stopped his White House photographer using images which were then included in his own book.Our Journey Together was reported to have made $20m in just two months on sale.TopicsBooksDonald TrumpUS politicsRepublicansPolitics booksAutobiography and memoirnewsReuse this content More

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      One Damn Thing After Another review: Bill Barr’s self-serving screed

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      One Damn Thing After Another review: Bill Barr’s self-serving screed Donald Trump’s attorney general wants you to know the bad stuff wasn’t his fault and the media and Democrats were nastyTake Bill Barr literally, but not too seriously. One day before his memoir was published, the former attorney general told NBC he would vote for Donald Trump for president in 2024, if Trump were the Republican nominee. For all Barr’s protestations about how the man was unsuited to the job, he continues to resist being banished from Trump’s garden.William Barr: Trump is full of bull – but I’ll vote for himRead moreSaid differently, Barr’s memoirs are best viewed as just one more installment of Trump-alumni performance art.As a read, One Damn Thing After Another delivers the expected. Barr gives Trump a thumbs-up for galvanizing the Republican white working-class base, satisfying social conservatives and meeting the demands of donors.At the same time, Barr lets us know suburbia came to find Trump offensive and insists that in the end, Trump crashed and burned despite Barr’s best efforts. Ultimately, like everyone else the 45th president ceased to find useful, Barr was simply spat out – a reality his memoir does at least acknowledge.The book is informative – to a point. As expected, Barr omits relevant facts and engages in score-settling. It’s a first-person tell-all, after all.Barr records the suicide in federal custody of Jeffrey Epstein, predator and friend of presidents Trump and Clinton. He makes no mention of the fact that his own father, Donald Barr, gave Epstein one of his first jobs, as a high-school math teacher at the Dalton school, a tony Manhattan establishment. Even then, former students have said, Epstein creeped out young women.Barr was attorney general for the first time under George HW Bush. In his book, he attacks Democrats and the media for their pursuit and coverage of “Iraqgate” and the US government’s extension of loan guarantees to Saddam Hussein in the run-up to the invasion of Kuwait. Barr singles out William Safire, the late Nixon speechwriter and New York Times columnist, for special condemnation.A Clinton administration investigation cleared Barr of legal wrongdoing – a fact he rightly emphasizes. But he neglects to mention that in October 1989, Bush signed National Security Directive 26, which effectively boosted Iraq as a counterbalance to Iran. From there, things didn’t exactly work out as planned. The president and his team overly emboldened Saddam. His unprovoked land grab was an unintended consequence of a policy pivot.Barr lets us know he grew up in a loving home, a product of a Catholic education, a player of the bagpipes. He attended the Horace Mann school in Riverdale, an affluent part of the Bronx. As Barr notes, the school was liberal and predominately Jewish.As a Columbia undergraduate, he stood against Vietnam war protesters. His antipathy toward the radical left is longstanding. He joined the Majority Coalition, a group of students and faculty members who defended the main administration building. As recorded by the late Diana Trilling, some rioters had no qualms about trashing the school, then demanding academic honors.Unstated by Barr is the operative campus divide, “Staten Island v Scarsdale”: conservative, often Catholic students from the blue-collar outer borough versus liberal, often Jewish students from the well-heeled suburbs. Though far from working class, Barr was firmly in the first camp.Barr came by his conservatism organically. His father served in the second world war. His older brother fought in Vietnam. In 1964, Barr helped his dad distribute campaign literature for Barry Goldwater’s ill-fated presidential campaign. Amid the turmoil of the 60s, Barr yearned for the stability of yesterday. He still does: he is a culture warrior in a Brooks Brothers suit.He takes shots at James Comey and Robert Mueller, key figures in the Russia investigation. Of course he does. He also takes aim at Lawrence Walsh, special counsel in Iran-Contra. Barr accuses Walsh, now dead, of torpedoing Bush’s campaign comeback in ’92 by filing election-eve charges against Casper Weinberger, Ronald Reagan’s defense secretary. Barr’s ire is understandable.But he also offers up a full-throated defense of his own decision to drop government charges against Michael Flynn, despite the Trump ally’s guilty plea to lying to the FBI and, later, demand for martial law. Furthermore, Barr says nary a word in response to the volley of criticism he earned from the federal bench.In spring 2020, Judge Reggie Walton, a George W Bush appointee, “seriously” questioned the attorney general’s integrity and credibility. To drive home the point, to describe Barr’s behavior over the Russia report, Walton deployed words like “distorted” and “misleading”.Emmett Sullivan scorned Barr’s legal gymnastics over Flynn. Amy Berman Jackson ruled that the government had to turn over a memorandum it relied upon in declining to prosecute Trump. Her take was lacerating. Not only had Barr been personally “disingenuous” by announcing his decision before Mueller’s report was released, Berman Jackson said, but the Department of Justice itself had been “disingenuous to this court”.Insurgency review: how Trump took over the Republican partyRead moreSuffice to say, Walton, Sullivan and Berman Jackson do not appear in Barr’s book.As luck would have it, though, Barr does take aim at Joe Biden for his stance on Russia. “Demonizing [Vladimir] Putin is not a foreign policy,” Barr writes, nor “the way grown-ups should think”.Really? Looks like Barr didn’t have an invasion of Ukraine on his bingo card. Trump’s admiration for Putin, of course, continues.As it turned out, Barr wasn’t alone in spilling his guts to NBC. In a letter to Lester Holt, its lead anchor, Trump wrote of his former attorney general: “He is groveling to the media, hoping to gain acceptance that he doesn’t deserve.”So true.
      One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General is published in the US by HarperCollins
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      William Barr uses new book to outline case against Trump White House run

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      William Barr uses new book to outline case against Trump White House runFormer attorney general also describes tempestuous Oval Office meeting in which he rejected electoral fraud claims

      Trump hints at 2024 presidential bid in CPAC speech
      In a new memoir, the former US attorney general William Barr says Donald Trump must not be the Republican candidate for president in 2024.Trump ignores Farage – and risks midterm elections farrago – with insistence on big lieRead moreThe man he served between 2019 and 2020, Barr writes, has “shown he has neither the temperament nor persuasive powers to provide the kind of positive leadership that is needed”.Trump, Barr says, has surrounded himself with “sycophants” and “whack jobs from outside the government, who fed him a steady diet of comforting but unsupported conspiracy theories”.Trump hinted again on Saturday that he intends to run in 2024. He did not immediately comment on Barr’s analysis. Last summer, though, he called his former attorney general a “swamp creature” and a “Rino [Republican in Name Only] … afraid, weak and frankly … pathetic”.Barr’s book, One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General, will be published on 8 March, its title taken from a description of the job by Ed Levi, appointed by Gerald Ford after the Watergate scandal.The Wall Street Journal, like publisher Harper Collins owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, first reported Barr’s book on Sunday. The New York Times and Washington Post followed suit.A strong conservative, Barr was seen by most as a loyal servant to Trump, the second president he worked for after George HW Bush. The Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren was among those who thought Barr way too loyal, calling him “a disgrace” and “not a credible head of federal law enforcement”.In his book, Barr rejects such accusations, prominently over the investigation of Russian election interference and links between Trump and Moscow.Barr was accused of running interference for Trump, ultimately releasing a preemptory report summary which prompted an objection from the special counsel, Robert Mueller.According to the Times, Barr calls claims he interfered “drivel” and says it was a “simple fact that the president never did anything to interfere with the special counsel’s investigation”.Mueller, however, laid out extensive evidence of possible obstruction of justice by Trump, including the dangling of pardons. In his own report, the special counsel said he could not exonerate the president of trying to obstruct his work.Regarding Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about contacts with Russians, Barr writes: “Predictably our motion to dismiss the charges led to an election-year media onslaught, flogging the old theme that I was doing this as a favour to Trump.“But I concluded the handling of the Flynn matter by the FBI had been an abuse of power that no responsible AG could let stand.”A former judge appointed to review Barr’s move to dismiss disagreed, saying it was “clear evidence of a gross abuse of prosecutorial power” and represented “highly irregular conduct to benefit a political ally of the president”.Flynn was eventually pardoned by Trump and became a key player in the attempt to overturn the 2020 election.Barr also sought a more lenient sentence for the Trump ally Roger Stone, convicted of trying to obstruct the Russia investigation. Four prosecutors resigned but Barr insists in his book it was “reasonable” to act as he did. Stone’s sentence was ultimately commuted by Trump.Barr also describes a previously reported Oval Office meeting on 1 December 2020, at which Trump pressed his lie about electoral fraud in his defeat by Joe Biden.Barr had outraged many by using the Department of Justice to investigate Trump’s claims. But no evidence of widespread fraud was found and Barr used an interview with the Associated Press to say so.The same day, according to Barr’s book, Trump shouted: “This is killing me – killing me. This is pulling the rug right out from under me.”Echoing accounts of the meeting in Peril, by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, and Betrayal, by Jonathan Karl, Barr says the president slipped into the third person.“He stopped for a moment and then said, ‘You must hate Trump. You would only do this if you hate Trump.’”Barr says he told Trump he had “sacrificed a lot personally to come in to help you when I thought you were being wronged”, but could not support the lie about electoral fraud.After Trump listed other grievances, Barr offered to resign – an offer not reported by Karl or Woodward and Costa.Betrayal review: Trump’s final days and a threat not yet extinguishedRead moreTrump, Barr writes, yelled “Accepted!”, banged his palm on a table and said: “Leave and don’t go back to your office. You are done right now. Go home!”Barr says White House lawyers persuaded Trump not to allow him to quit. Barr finally resigned on 14 December, nearly two weeks later.On 6 January 2021, after Trump spoke at a rally near the White House, the Capitol was attacked. Seven people died around the riot and more than 100 police officers were hurt. More than 700 people have been charged, 11 with seditious conspiracy. Trump was impeached, for inciting an insurrection.In his book, Barr says: “The absurd lengths to which [Trump] took his ‘stolen election’ claim led to the rioting on Capitol Hill.”But he also says Trump’s behaviour did not meet the legal standard for an incitement charge.TopicsBooksWilliam BarrUS politicsDonald TrumpTrump administrationRepublicansAutobiography and memoirnewsReuse this content More

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      Barack Obama on how uncovering his past helped him plan his future

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      How I wroteBarack Obama on how uncovering his past helped him plan his futureThe former president of the United States was at a crossroads in his life when he wrote his first book, Dreams from My Father Barack ObamaSat 2 Oct 2021 06.00 EDTI was in my early 30s when I wrote Dreams from My Father. At the time, I was a few years out of law school. Michelle and I were newly married and just beginning to think about having kids. My mother was still alive. And I was not yet a politician.I look back now and understand that I was at an important crossroads then, thinking hard about who I wanted to be in the world and what sort of contribution I could make. I was passionate about civil rights, curious about public service, full of loose ideas, and entirely uncertain about which path I should take. I had more questions than answers. Was it possible to create more trust between people and lessen our divides? How much did small steps toward progress matter – improving conditions at a school, say, or registering more people to vote – when our larger systems seemed so broken? Would I accomplish more by working inside existing institutions or outside of them?Behind all of this floated something more personal, a deeper set of unresolved questions: Who am I? Where do I come from? How do I belong?That’s what compelled me to start writing this book.A Promised Land by Barack Obama review – an impressive but incomplete memoirRead moreI’ve always believed that the best way to meet the future involves making an earnest attempt at understanding the past. It’s why I enjoy reading different accounts of history and why I value the insights of those who’ve been on this earth longer than I have. Some folks might see history as something we put behind us, a bunch of words and dates carved in stone, a set of dusty artefacts best stored in a vault. But for me, history is alive the same way an old-growth forest is alive, deep and rich, rooted and branching off in unexpected directions, full of shadows and light. What matters most is how we carry ourselves through that forest – the perspectives we bring, the assumptions we make, and our willingness to keep returning to it, to ask the harder questions about what’s been ignored, whose voices have been erased.These pages represent my early, earnest attempt to walk through my own past, to examine the strands of my heritage as I considered my future. In writing it, I was able to dwell inside the lives of my parents and grandparents, the landscapes, cultures and histories they carried, the values and judgments that shaped them – and that in turn, shaped me. What I learned through this process helped to ground me. It became the basis for how I moved forward, giving me the confidence to know I could be a good father to my children and the courage to know I was ready to step forward as a leader.The act of writing is exactly that powerful. It’s a chance to be inquisitive with yourself, to observe the world, confront your limits, walk in the shoes of others, and try on new ideas. Writing is difficult, but that’s kind of the point. You might spend hours pushing yourself to remember what an old classroom smelled like, or the timbre of your father’s voice, or the precise colour of some shells you saw once on a beach. This work can anchor you, and fortify you, and surprise you. In finding the right words, in putting in that time, you may not always hit upon specific answers to life’s big questions, but you will understand yourself better. That’s how it works for me, anyway.The young man you meet in these pages is flawed and full of yearning, asking questions of himself and the world around him, learning as he goes. I know now, of course, that this was just the beginning for him. If you’re lucky, life provides you with a good long arc. I hope that my story will encourage you to think about telling your story, and to value the stories of others around you. The journey is always worth taking. Your answers will come.TopicsHow I wroteAutobiography and memoirUS politicsHistory booksfeaturesReuse this content More